Possession
by Neftzer
Summary: Pre-series. Berlin, October 1942 - Could pregnant Elizabeth Bronte possibly have any idea what the Witchblade has in store for her, or she for it?
1. Seeking Absolution

_Witchblade_, pre-series.  
*Rated "pW" for Previous Wielder. Deals with past lives. Based largely on conjecture, historical fact, and previous same-author fanfiction. 

* * *

**Possession**   
_"No one worth possessing can be quite possessed."_ - Sara Teasdale

**October 3, 1942 - Berlin, Germany** - Elizabeth Bronte entered the cathedral with the late morning sun to her back, and her five-year-old daughter Mabel's gloved hand in her own. Obediently, the pair bent at the knee to genuflect to the altar that stood at the opposite end of the long center aisle stretching out before them. 

Even as Elizabeth straightened from the quick curtsey she could feel her cervix stretching--as she had felt it stretch over the past weeks--pulling taut, as it made ready to open in preparation for the event her swollen belly heralded. Such movements--and such reminders--were no longer a surprise or point of fascination for her. It could be any day now, at any time. She was not afraid, but she was very aware. 

Turning her gaze from the view of the altar, she passed Mabel's hand into that of the hired nanny Major Stretzer had found for her. Looking barely older than a girl, but professing herself to be eighteen (with papers--possibly forged--that backed her claim), Dominique Goudder was all eyes; no amount of healthy diet had yet been able to change her edging-on-gaunt frame. In this age of war hers was not an uncommon appearance. Even in the heart of Berlin. Only time would tell how handy (eighteen years to her credit, or not) she might prove to be with the coming baby. 

"Stay here," Bronte instructed the two girls in a quiet voice, directing them to seats. "Help Mabel with her Rosary," she told Dominique. "I won't be long." 

Both girls complied from habit, knowing that once Bronte returned from the Confessional, Dominique would enter and Bronte take her place with Mabel until all had been absolved and they could stop at a nearby bakery for bread and sweets to enjoy on the journey back to the flat. Such days were, by now, an accepted tradition. 

Removing her elaborate hat and replacing it with a simpler, more sedate scarf, Elizabeth Bronte walked softly toward the unoccupied Confessional and entered. In her condition unable to kneel with any degree of grace or comfort, she instead took a seat on the hard wooden bench, and turned her head to the screened window, which, presently, remained closed. 

Of late an impatient exhaustion had come over her; she found it very hard to center herself even for the duration of the brief wait for a Confessor to take his place in the stall next to her. 

The bold strokes of the organist in the balcony beyond pumped the grand strains of Martin Luther's "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" into the reverberating stone of the cathedral, and it sent her mind back to England, and to Scott--one of her few British Intelligence contacts. Of course, she smiled to herself, Scott would rather protest, as the Scot he was, at being heaped in among the British. He rather preferred, in his buoyant moments, to be known as 'Scottish Intelligence'--though there were those in the department that would regularly take issue with what they saw (some not as playfully as others) as an oxymoron. 

_And God bless you, Hamilton Angus Scott_, Elizabeth thought to herself in a half-prayer. It was Scott who had first introduced her to code-breaking, Scott with whom she had shared her first attempt at a code of her own--one whose codex was to be found in the very notes of this ancient song. A perfect little masterpiece it had been, transposing it as she had. At the time, the best and most exciting work she had done in years. And about the only thing that had saved her from the emotional abyss that was Jack's death. She had lost so many other things when she had lost her RAF flyer of a husband (and Mabel's father) to _blitzkrieg_. But now was hardly the time to think about that, she warned herself sternly, wary of her easy emotions of late, and how the slightest melancholy could play utter havoc with them. 

She mused instead on the notes of the hymn, charted them in her mind, found places for them on her mental treble and bass clefs, decoded what the message this organist would be sending had he understood the code, playing in this particular key, this phrase of the melody. 

_Ah_, she heard it; the certain performer's timbre and technique clear to her as a bell being rung in a silent room. It was Old Franz, the organist from the Lutheran church. Things indeed were tight for Berliners--indeed for all Germany--when the Great Reformer's hymn was finding its way into Catholic cathedrals by virtue of the fact all the organists were gone to fight, leaving only Old Franz to take up the slack. 

The Witchblade warmed on Bronte's arm, like a cold stove beginning to heat for baking. _Take_, it told her, urging her to offer herself in Old Franz's place as organist. 

"Settle down," she crooned to the bracelet, always so eager to push its wielder toward almost anything she desired. This was no time for willfulness, Bronte counseled the sentient jewelry, its amber talisman stone dark in the half-light of the Confessional. In her condition she wasn't good for much, and these last few months she'd begun a descent into feeling useless, her mission retreating farther and farther ahead of her ever-expanding figure. Frustration and loneliness had been running high. 

It was pointless, though, to regret Paris. Pointless and mis-guided. She did not regret it, but had come to resent the situation (though not the unborn child) it had gifted her with--this 'delicate condition'--this entire lack of all utility. 

Take her place as organist? She could not successfully assay the steps to the organ balcony as a viable contender for Old Franz's position; could not play the piano (the keys now obscured--and kept beyond her reach--by her belly) in her own flat. How, then, could she aspire to anything at all like nation and world-altering espionage? 

Interrupting her self-doubt, the hymn's powerful notes sang to her, over-covering her own thoughts of inadequacy; "His king-dom is for-ev-er". 

_A kingdom not Third Reich-born. Ha! Take that, Adolf_, Bronte thought venomously--and the Witchblade, gurgling, concurred. 

Even the best Yankees pitchers, she consoled herself (ignoring the Witchblade's continued prickings), got injured, benched from time to time. So she'd police the dugout. For now. The baby would arrive any day--any moment--and she'd be back on the mound throwing strikes before you could say, 'knife'. Until then, she, ankles bloated, breathing constricted, heartburn ever-present, Witchblade pouty as a child wanting out on a rainy day--she would wait. 

_...to be continued..._

* * *

DISCLAIMERS: Elizabeth Bronte and the Witchblade (and other characters that will make appearances in other chapters to come) are property of Top Cow and Warner Bros. I mean no disrespect, and am not making any money or profit out of their use here.   
Any inaccuracies please chalk up to deliberate anachronism. It's just a happier, more criticism-free world that way. 

What happened to Elizabeth Bronte before _Possession_? Check out _Occupation_, posted here at fanfiction.net. 

Neftzer 2003(c)   
Feedback _always_ appreciated.   
Grab yerself a heapin' helpin' of some fictionality at Neftzer's OutBack Fiction Shack online at royaltoby.com / shack 


	2. Not Yet Corrupted Enough

_Witchblade_, pre-series.  
*Rated "pW" for Previous Wielder. Deals with past lives. Based largely on conjecture, historical fact, and previous same-author fanfiction. 

* * *

The Confessional's screen slid back with a scraping noise like that of polished wood in a track, reminding Bronte of the pocket doors separating the parlor from the dining room at her first piano teacher's home. The opening the screen made revealed only the smallest bit of light from the other half of the Confessional. 

"Forgive me, Father," she began, rotely, though not without genuine feeling. "For I have sinned. It has been two weeks since my last confession." 

"Go on, my child." 

"Twice I lost my temper, three times I coveted the clothing and figure of my neighbor, and five times I shared the bed of a man who is not my husband." 

"And what of this man's wife, then?" the Confessor asked, his elderly voice weary--cracking not with judgment, but empathy. "Have you thought of how your sin affects her?" 

"He has no wife, Father, and my own husband is dead." Bronte let herself continue with explanation, but only in her own head; _And I consent to share his bed only as the one who will betray him and this country--this regime--time and time again, without remorse, using any information that comes into my path, and giving it into the hands of your enemy. So that the Reich might be destroyed, and the oppressed freed and the world again made safe and whole._

"I see," he answered, having heard only that which she said aloud. "And your daughter--have you thought of her in this? Such a child growing up to see and learn such things as your sinful actions might teach her?" 

"Yes, Father." _Was there any way not to think of Mabel in all this? It was for Mabel's future--her very life--that Elizabeth wrestled with this murky, dubious occupation that had become her war. For Mabel that she was not even now sitting in the fall air on her mother's Brooklyn porch, her swollen feet too long hidden by her belly propped up on an apple crate as she drank a Coca-Cola from a cold green-glass bottle and watching as Mabel jumped rope with the other girls on their street in the patch of yard. Oh yes, she had thought of Mabel. Had thought of Mabel in that yard. Had thought of Nazis on that street, that yard--that porch. It was just such thoughts that had brought her--and Mabel--to where they were._

"And this child that you carry," the Confessor continued, "fatherless, then, isn't it--if this man will not confess his sin as well, and marry you. How can this child be baptized? How can this child be accepted into the fellowship of the Church? These are hard times, my daughter," he sighed heavily. "Hard times for anyone. Yet you make them harder on yourself through such disobedience." There was a pause. "For losing your temper and falling prey to a covetous heart, seven Our Fathers." 

She waited. 

"For this sin of adultery, though, I--I cannot continue to absolve you without proof of true contrition." Again he paused, as though his words were as hard to say as they were to hear. "You must return for absolution when you have broken with this man and such impure activities. Until that time you must abstain from Holy Communion. And you must think about your children. You must learn to be strong for them. To put their future first--above your own desires." 

The priest began to chant in Latin, and Bronte instinctively bent her head and closed her eyes as he prayed a blessing over her. She had nothing to say; his pronouncement deflated what little breath she could still take in with the baby's weight wedged below her diaphragm. She had expected a rebuke--she had been coming to Confess here for the past five or so months--ever since the church nearer her flat had taken a bomber's direct hit and been leveled to nothing more than once-consecrated rubble. A rebuke, yes--but not a disfellowshipping of this kind. Barred from Communion, and threatened with a refusal to baptize her child? She could hardly even begin to think how to rectify such a situation--it was not likely that she could, indeed marry Stretzer, even had the idea appealed to her. It was less likely still that she could afford to remove herself from intimate relations with him--not with her mission on the line, even as spottily as she had been able to perform it of late. And finally, she was not yet corrupted enough to lie to her Confessor within the Confessional, telling him she had given Stretzer up. Her thoughts were at a loss. 

When the Confessor's blessing was finished, the ritual complete, and she was just about to stand and exit, he spoke again--his voice somewhat softer than before. "It is my sincere hope, my daughter, that you will take counsel on this," he said--a disembodied voice from the darkness. "Pass tonight alone, in quiet contemplation. Refuse to see this unrepentant man, or keep his company. And trust in what our all-knowing Father sends to you to direct your path." She heard the rustle of his sleeves as he reached for his Rosary beads. "Until then I will keep you in my prayers." 

Before she could speak in return--so taken aback she was by being addressed so casually by a Confessor--there was a swish of his cassock against the curtain, and he had left. 

Pulling the curtain of her half aside, she had only a moment to glimpse his elderly, but elegantly straight back traveling up the side aisle toward the altar, and inside the distant doorway of the sacristy, where she could not follow. 

_...to be continued..._

* * *

DISCLAIMERS: Elizabeth Bronte and the Witchblade (and other characters that will make appearances in other chapters to come) are property of Top Cow and Warner Bros. I mean no disrespect, and am not making any money or profit out of their use here. 

Please, no angry comments about what the priest had to say to Bronte. The Confessor's words are his own, as a _fictional_ character. He's not making policy for the Catholic Church, and he's meant to represent no one but himself, a work of _fiction_. Thanks for understanding, and for also understanding that this was something preventative that I had to include in this disclaimer.   
Any inaccuracies please chalk up to deliberate anachronism. It's just a happier, more criticism-free world that way. 

What happened to Elizabeth Bronte before _Possession_? Check out _Occupation_, posted here at fanfiction.net. 

Neftzer 2003(c)   
Feedback _always_ appreciated.   
Grab yerself a heapin' helpin' of some fictionality at Neftzer's OutBack Fiction Shack online at royaltoby.com / shack 


	3. I Saw No One But You

_Witchblade_, pre-series.  
*Rated "pW" for Previous Wielder. Deals with past lives. Based largely on conjecture, historical fact, and previous same-author fanfiction. 

* * *

Dumbfounded, Bronte hardly knew what to make of the priest's cryptic final instruction to pass the evening alone, in quiet contemplation. It was far more specific than the general type of guidance she was used to receiving. Every time she turned it over in her mind on their way back to the flat, the Witchblade tickled her wrist like a cat swishing its tail in her face. 

It hardly mattered, though, her present state kept her eternally cooped up in the flat--with only the occasional visit to the park with Mabel, and trips to Confession and Mass to mark the passing of the autumnal days. 

Major Helmut Stretzer did continue to visit--so regularly that she could only begin to imagine his fellow _Schutzstaffel_ officers' reactions at his devotion to her. To continue to court one's own mistress were she to get pregnant was unheard of--at least until after she delivered the child and had regained her figure. But to continue to pursue a woman who was not only largely pregnant, but also made so by another man? _Unprecedented_. 

She welcomed his visits, though; they proved the only moments in this last third of her confinement in which she could even pretend to practice the espionage for which she had been trained and sent here. The only times in which she could hope to acquire even the smallest bit of information with which to continue to fight in the war, instead of languish on the sidelines. 

Likewise, it was Stretzer's visits alone that kept food in the pantry and other household staples on the shelves. Unable to find work once she could no longer hide her condition, without his regular assistance--his gifts of ration coupons and sometimes even the actual groceries-- Elizabeth and Mabel would long ago have reached a point lower than that about which she cared to think. 

And then there was the addition to their life of nanny Dominique Goudder. A present from the Major, she had arrived at their door some five months ago, with a note signed by Stretzer explaining that she was now to live with them, his instructions much like a card that would accompany a bouquet of flowers, urging you to get them in a vase. 

Weeks prior, Bronte and Stretzer had attended a party at _Obergruppenfuehrer_ Krugen's home. Though his wife was out of town visiting family, Krugen was not the sort of man to care much whether his wife knew of his dalliances or not, and not the sort of man to respect Frau Krugen enough to keep such debauchery as other officers and their mistresses away from the Krugen home. 

As one of the housemaids that night, Dominique had been serving drinks, her hands shaky beneath the tray, her speech clumsy with fear of the officers--and the officers' women. 

Her frail and gawky appearance--like that of a too-tall ballerina--so stuck with Bronte that she found herself mentioning the girl to Stretzer on the way home in his car. 

"Did you see that young girl," she asked as he kissed her neck with a lazy amorousness. 

"Of course not, my darling," he replied, sleepily. "I saw no one but you." 

"That's nice," she told him. "I forgive you for noticing her." 

"The Aryan with the large eyes," he asked, his voice showing his lack of investment in the topic of the girl. "Mmm. Krugen has some wicked, wicked stories of chasing her about the parlor--and some other rooms--on more than one occasion. It would seem such bony half-ghosts are very much to his taste--at times," Stretzer confessed. 

"Why, she can't be much older than a child!" Bronte could not keep herself from exclaiming. 

"Krugen is an unrefined boor," Stretzer agreed. "It is rumored that his mother's half-brother was a Polish potato farmer," he chuckled. "Of course, he denies it. His mother had no half-brother, he says." He moved his mouth back to her neck. "Think no more about it," he suggested. "He will throw no more parties until Frau Krugen is again out of town, which, after the report the staff and neighbor gossips will share with her from this one--will not be until the war is long over." 

And they spoke no more about the girl, until the day Bronte opened the door to the flat, and there she, Dominique, stood; large eyes, severely tight blonde braids wound about her head and pinned with Deutsch efficiency, her frame so thin as to question whether she could lift more than half a stone. 

And the note she carried: '_Let us make her fat and jolly, round with content--and we will have revenge on Krugen for his cheap brandy yet! Your darling Stretzer_.' 

Dominique herself filled in the rest; Stretzer had cleverly asked Frau Krugen directly about employing the girl. Frau Krugen had been more than happy to transfer such a stumbling block away from her husband to the other side of town--and to the employ of one of his fellow officers. 

And so, as Krugen's comeuppance, Dominique had come to stay. 

She proved helpful--though dreadfully inexperienced--at anything she was given to do. The only thing at which she seemed to posses any natural ability or intuition was sewing, by hand or machine. And so Bronte had exploited her to that end--continuing on with whatever household chores she could still complete on her own--and assigning Dominique an elaborate maternity wardrobe be made for her, fall clothing for Mabel, and tiny, exquisite, painstakingly smocked and stitched gowns for the baby to come. Additionally, the young girl spoke nearly perfect French--which she had been enlisted to help (along with Bronte) impart to Mabel. 

"Mabel," Bronte asked in that language now, quizzing her young daughter, "do you think the Major will bring fruit or vegetable to us tonight?" Over the top of Mabel's head, she exchanged a smile with Dominique. 

Mabel extended her hand toward Bronte's right wrist--a game they played, as if the Witchblade could be made to predict the future (as if the Witchblade could be _made_ to do anything). The child asked permission, using her quiet--but improving--French, and Bronte consented, extending her arm for the talisman, like Aladdin's lamp, to be rubbed. 

Mabel's small fingers lightly patted the stone, "Caerdydd-Cymru" she chanted, a meaningless-to-her magical phrase Bronte had provided some time ago, in place of 'abracadabra'. 

But before Mabel could pronounce her guess--fruit or vegetable--and be further quizzed in French, tight pain shot down the small of Bronte's back, behind her knees, causing them nearly to give out under her. 

She did not know it, but she had unconsciously moved to seat herself on the only available spot near them on the sidewalk--a precarious fountain ledge, the water spitting out behind her, Dominique (and to a lesser degree Mabel) donning worried looks and asking--in German now--if she were okay. 

She did not see or hear them, did not see or hear the fountain, or the still-warm fall afternoon. The wielder of the Witchblade was no longer there--she was well across town, her consciousness (if not her body) in Major Stretzer's office--where he was entertaining an unexpected visitor--Hedda Germer, her dead lover Rolf's widow. 

_...to be continued..._

* * *

DISCLAIMERS: Elizabeth Bronte and the Witchblade (and other characters that will make appearances in other chapters to come) are property of Top Cow and Warner Bros. I mean no disrespect, and am not making any money or profit out of their use here.   
Any inaccuracies please chalk up to deliberate anachronism. It's just a happier, more criticism-free world that way. 

What happened to Elizabeth Bronte before _Possession_? Check out _Occupation_, posted here at fanfiction.net. 

Neftzer 2003(c)   
Feedback _always_ appreciated.   
Grab yerself a heapin' helpin' of some fictionality at Neftzer's OutBack Fiction Shack online at royaltoby.com / shack 


	4. Definitely Vegetable

_Witchblade_, pre-series.  
*Rated "pW" for Previous Wielder. Deals with past lives. Based largely on conjecture, historical fact, and previous same-author fanfiction. 

* * *

The pain did not leave Bronte. The visions--as a side effect of the pregnancy, she supposed--had grown in the past months to a level at which they were hard to control. A level at which her present-time reaction to them was difficult to manipulate. She had been reaching a state of benign coexistence with them just prior to Paris, in which she could step in and out, suppress or extract what they had to say as pleased her. _No more_. Though the talisman-sprung portents came with less frequency, they more than compensated for their scarcity by their intensity. 

This one seemed to delight in slowing the beat of her heart--and the baby's heart as well, which, for a long moment she could hear, beating in a sluggish tandem that echoed her own. Yet even her fright at this audibly diminished pace had no pull over quickening it. The two hearts plodded on, laggardly, witnessing what was put before them. 

Stretzer's office, early afternoon. He was having a smoke when his attaché, a dapper looking young man, announced a visitor. 

"Frau Germer--Hedda!" Stretzer exclaimed, as a sad-eyed--though stylish--woman entered through the doorway and took a seat. "I had not thought to see you here." He quickly covered for his surprise, an expansive smile engulfing his face. "What a charming afternoon you have made it." 

"Don't over-flatter me, Helmut," she warned, though without venom. "I've come about Rolf's woman." 

"What?" he asked benignly. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean." 

_Bronte could no longer hear her heart--or that of her child's. Her hands were so damp with sweat they had becomes slippery._

"We can be civilized, Helmut," Hedda assured him. "I won't make a scene. I've known about her for some time now." 

Stretzer remained silent, his smile gone, allowing Frau Germer to speak until she reached the reason for her visit. This was to be business. 

"It is difficult, after all," Widow Germer's tone was flat and smooth; one would never know what a passion she had flown into when she had first found out about her husband and Elizabeth Bronte, "to conceal entirely an over-long holiday to Paris--" 

"Please," Stretzer prompted, magnanimously, "let us not speak ill of the heroic dead." 

"Very well," she agreed. "Aline Krugen tells me the woman is with child, and that you, as her new--hmm, benefactor--have engaged one of Aline's maids as nanny." 

Stretzer raised an eyebrow, obviously doubtful that she was about to chastise him for his involvement with her dead husband's mistress. 

"And she tells me the child is Rolf's." 

_Bronte's eardrums popped as though she were climbing to a great height--anticipating a great fall._

Stretzer stuck out his lower lip, as though in contemplation. "The timing would seem to make that likely." 

"So, you have no claim on this child?" Hedda asked, her eyes narrowing slightly. 

"As much as I am enjoying your keen interest in my personal affairs, Frau Germer," Stretzer answered, using her formal title--he had had enough of indulging her, "no, I cannot claim the parentage of this child. But then," he added, "Save for the mother's own assertion, no proof exists that the child is your husband's." 

"It is enough that I am convinced," Frau Germer said with a careful tilt of her chin, pulling her hand from her pocketbook, which she had placed on her lap. "I have documents here, just signed, that give me the rights to it, and grant its parentage as Rolf's, adding it to the Germer line." 

_Bronte began to fall._

"This woman, as I have been told, is a good German, yes? A daughter of the Fatherland?" 

"Born and bred," Stretzer affirmed, his tone bored, as though she were insistently discussing a horse on which he had not wagered. 

"If I have it from you, Major, then my last worry is laid to rest. The child may not be mine by blood, but it will be Rolf's, and that leaves only the details. Aline has been told the woman might deliver at any time." 

"It is possible," Stretzer agreed with a careless shrug. "I know little of such things." 

"I will have the child immediately." 

_There was no end to the precipice from which she had been thrown, only wind--cold and howling--swirling about her, and this hateful vision from which she could not dissociate._

"May I ask," Stretzer spoke, "beyond clearing up the uncertain issue of parentage, what brought you here, Frau? You have the papers, the legal means to accomplish what you wish--" 

"I want you to talk to this woman--" 

"Yes? And what would you have me say?" a twist of curiosity played at the corner of his mouth. 

"Tell her that the life Rolf--and his legacy--can offer the child is beyond anything she could hope to. Tell her that I will pay--a one-time sum--if she agrees to make this simpler. With the papers, you know, I can make it unpleasant for her. I have no wish for that. No wish to see her in prison or sent to a work camp. I would think--" she stuttered a little, "in her line of work--a child could only hamper--" at a cocked eyebrow from Stretzer she cut herself off. 

"You have never met this woman," Stretzer answered her, though she had asked no question. "As a courtesy I will, of course, bring your situation to her attention, but as you say, you have the papers. You hardly needed to involve me." 

"Yes," Hedda agreed, "I know, but it seems only--right--to try and deal fairly with this woman--on her own terms." 

"Her own terms being to sell her child to her lover's widow. Hmmm. Yes, I see," Stretzer's tone was sardonic with SS-perfected disinterest. "As you say, you've had the necessary papers drawn up," and he crossed the room to look them over from where Hedda extended them for his inspection. 

_The child's heartbeat within her burst to life--as though the Witchblade felt she needed a reminder of the promise she carried. Bronte struggled against the heavy weight of pain to attempt to control the fading vision--to make it show her the paperwork--to extend the vision in order to discern what happened next, but the portent of the office vanished,_ and she was left with her eyes filling with afternoon sun, as the concerned faces of Dominique and Mabel jockeyed for position in her line of sight. 

She forced herself to form her lips into a reassuring smile for their sake. How she wished she could run--grab Mabel up in her arms, yell at Dominique to follow, and run without stopping until the smell and sight Brooklyn--the sounds of Brooklyn--washed over her, eliminating the building hysteria she felt herself now only barely sidestepping. 

Looking down at the Witchblade, its stone all but pulsing in jolly time to the continuing painful spasms in her back--unmindful of consequences--Bronte threatened it in Latin. "_You got me into this_," she told it, her voice huffing in and out with breaths meant to assuage the onslaught of pain, "_you can very well get me out_." 

She allowed three tears to hit her cheek before standing and assuring Dominique and Mabel that she would be all right; she just needed to get home. 

It was a more truthful statement than she had uttered in a year--and more accurate than either child could possibly have understood. _She just needed to get home._

. 

"Vegetable, May," she told her young daughter in French, taking her hand. There had been a sack of potatoes resting--waiting--by the leg of Stretzer's attaché's desk. Bronte forced herself to submerge the pain and put one foot in front of the other. "The Major is bringing us vegetables. We must be sure to thank him." Her own voice sounded dead to her. 

"Yes, Mama," Mabel promised, as Dominique began listing--still in French--the menu possibilities potatoes would present. The large, hungry eyes of the doubtfully eighteen-year-old nanny shone with the unexpected gift's potential. 

Crossing the _straße_, American spy Elizabeth Bronte--denied absolution, her unborn child refused baptism, the originally protective lie she had manufactured about its parentage enabling another woman to legally claim it--willed herself not to vomit. 

_...to be continued..._

* * *

DISCLAIMERS: Elizabeth Bronte and the Witchblade (and other characters that will make appearances in other chapters to come) are property of Top Cow and Warner Bros. I mean no disrespect, and am not making any money or profit out of their use here.   
Any inaccuracies please chalk up to deliberate anachronism. It's just a happier, more criticism-free world that way. 

What happened to Elizabeth Bronte before _Possession_? Check out _Occupation_, posted here at fanfiction.net. 

Neftzer 2003(c)   
Feedback _always_ appreciated.   
Grab yerself a heapin' helpin' of some fictionality at Neftzer's OutBack Fiction Shack online at royaltoby.com / shack 


	5. A Bare Instant

_Witchblade_, pre-series.  
*Rated "pW" for Previous Wielder. Deals with past lives. Based largely on conjecture, historical fact, and previous same-author fanfiction. 

* * *

Upon arriving at the flat, Elizabeth directly set Dominique to readying Mabel for her afternoon nap. Elizabeth sent herself straight to bed. 

_False labor_, she assured herself, teeth gritted against the pain. A few hours horizontal would stave it off enough. Enough so that she could receive Stretzer later that evening. 

She had all but forgotten the priest's cryptic counsel (to break with the Major and spend the evening alone in quiet contemplation--waiting for whatever God would send her to 'direct her path')--despite the potentially dire consequences he had outlined to her only hours before. 

In her crowded and frightened mind there was no room for any thought beyond Stretzer, the Witchblade's vision, and her desperate need to win him away from Hedda Germer's quest and to _her_ side--a task she knew would not be simple. 

Certainly, Stretzer cared for her--insofar as she continued to please him, continued to make aspects of his life more pleasant rather than less. But her child? The child she had told him was Rolf Germer's? The child was nothing to him. He had told her as much shortly after she had broken the news to him. It had been in March, though she had known of her situation long before. 

Stretzer had told her in his nonchalant way that, naturally, if she wished to "lose" the child he knew some names. In the same breath he had also informed her, casually, that he felt no compulsion to direct the situation one way or another as her current amour. Her decision interested him only academically. 

And then, he had taken her hand and kissed it in the way that he had--as though she contained some mineral, some vitamin crucial to his existence--as though he could never hope to get enough of her. As though she were something to be consumed, desperately--as bread to the starving, or wine to the parched. 

Bronte had protested against the "losing" of the child--not too much (she had not wished him to believe she wanted the child for sentimental reasons regarding Rolf)--and her argument fell back on patriotism. 

_Had not the Fuehrer himself given more than one moving address to the nation about the importance of family, and German children, and the legacy they would proudly carry?_

She professed a passion for patriotism where this inconvenient child was concerned, and Stretzer indulged her, because she pleased him. Because he could see no way in which this child could affect his life--his romance--with Elizabeth Bronte any more than the existence of Mabel did at present. And as of right now, his chief passion was for Elizabeth Bronte. 

His other passions were for paperwork, exactness and efficiency. He could hardly have advanced so quickly among the SS had they not been. She knew he would not stand in the way of Hedda Germer, widow of the heroic dead, her husband's ghostly Valhalla-like legacy more influential among his comrades than his physical manifestation would have been. No, Stretzer would have no wish to stand in the way of Hedda Germer and her valuable paperwork. Not unless Bronte could effect such a desire in him. 

And she was not likely to be able to effectively do so if should she still be in pain when he arrived for the evening. 

. 

Lowering herself onto the mattress in her bedroom, she attempted to calm herself, and loosen the spasm pains binding her lower back. _There could be a baby tomorrow_, she told herself with false cheer. _Tomorrow would be a wonderful day for a baby_ (she lied), _but not today_. There was too much yet to do. 

. 

She could not have been lying down for more than fifteen minutes when a loud hubbub of knocking came from the flat's outer door. It was not the sound of a delivery--not the sound of the landlady. It was the sound of hurried impatience. She could translate no more exactly than that. 

It took a moment, but she rose from the bed, rolling to her side, knowing there was no reasonable way, without assistance, she could get her shoes on if she meant to answer the knock within the next twenty minutes. 

Waddling--she didn't like to think of it, but she knew she did it--down the hallway, past Mabel's room, and waving away Dominique who had left off telling a naptime story to find her and likely offer assistance with her shoes, Bronte found her right fist vise-clenched as though all the pain in her body rested there in that single claw-like gnarl. 

Looking down, she saw--and felt--the Witchblade begin to grow and cover the knotted shape into which her fist had morphed. The armor of the Blade rose no higher than the base of her wrist--like a stylish, abbreviated glovelet--but she found that in letting it grow so a great deal of her pain lessened. Discovering this blessing--a heretofore-unknown analgesic--she made no attempt to coax the talisman back into its dormant jewelry state. 

"A moment, please!" she threw at the door and its knocker. _They have not come for the baby_, she told herself. _It is too soon. Frau Germer said herself she wished Stretzer to approach me first. They do not know I even know of their meeting. They have_ not _come for the baby._

So concentrated was she on this matter, so filled with convincing herself it was not so, she spared not a moment to consider--as she usually did--the fact that her and Mabel's very lives here were made of little more than a string of well-woven but fallible untruths that at any moment could unravel and expose them with deadly consequences. This was the usual realization that such unexpected knocking prompted. And usually such a realization was generally followed by the appropriate use of caution and suspicion. At this moment, however, not so. 

Without asking the knocker's identity, Bronte opened the door, allowing a generous crack of eight inches or so to exist between herself and the knocker. 

In the hallway of her building--close to the door at which he had, until half a moment prior been knocking, stood a lone man. His clothes were dusty from travel or neglect, the coat he wore a size too large and patched in several places, his hat frayed and his beard full but shaggy, as was his hair. 

All this she saw in a bare instant. 

He was far from being an unfamiliar sight on any street in Berlin. The only remarkable thing about him was his age, close to hers--the age at which any healthy German men would already have been pressed into military service--if he had not yet signed up of his own accord. 

He wore his hat low, making his eyes and the other features not obscured by his beard difficult to see in sharp focus. 

_"Guten tag, Frau,_" he said, his hand extending to her, holding out something she could not quite see in the fading light. "I'm sorry to have followed you home," he apologized, haltingly, "but you dropped this on the street just now. It did not seem like something you would wish to be without." 

Elizabeth's eyes followed his to the item he held out to her. 

At the sight of it something seemed to snap, like a rubber band over-taut inside her head. It made her eyes flutter, as though irritated from the hallway's ever-present dust motes. 

Her left hand (she kept her right, clothed in the Witchblade, out of sight behind the door) accepted what he pressed into it. A soft, silk scarf, hand-sewn. As he had recounted, it did indeed look as though it had been dropped in the street, though more than just the once. 

The scene, which had been playing out slowly, as though the Victrola's crank was winding down on the record's last song, took on an unexpected, but certain clearness and alacrity. 

She blinked--her eyes were unable to look at the scarf without losing their focus. "Dominique," she called over her shoulder--knowing the girl had followed her to the door. "My pocketbook." 

And to the man she said, loud enough for the tenant on the floor below or above to hear; "thank you. I must give you something for your trouble--a reward." She smiled pleasantly, as though he were nothing more than a down-on-his-luck chap who'd brought her something she'd dropped on the street. 

His eyes were pinholes of reflected light under the hat's brim, his face slack with easy tranquility--but those eyes remained severe, intent on her own. 

She kept the door cracked at eight inches, and handed him two Deutsche marks. "Again," she assured him vocally, as a disinterested frau to an honest tramp. "Thank you." Her voice at an almost inaudible pitch, she added, "two hours." 

Without further exchange, he turned and left, and she shut the door to his retreating back, her fingers twined with a silk scarf she had never worn about her neck--much less lost in the street today for some indigent to rescue and claim a reward for returning. 

Elizabeth Bronte let out her breath, and the Witchblade relaxed for a moment its hold on her fist; with its momentary retreat, the pain returned. A spasm like a poker-hot knitting needle shot across her abdomen. Reflexively her lungs inhaled, letting out a ragged sound like a man long submerged returning to air. It had been almost ten months since she had last seen the priest John Bellamy. 

_...to be continued..._

* * *

DISCLAIMERS: Elizabeth Bronte and the Witchblade (and additional characters that will make appearances in other chapters to come) are property of Top Cow and Warner Bros. I mean no disrespect, and am not making any money or profit out of their use here.   
Any inaccuracies please chalk up to deliberate anachronism. It's just a happier, more criticism-free world that way. 

What happened to Elizabeth Bronte before _Possession_? Check out _Occupation_, posted here at fanfiction.net. 

Neftzer 2003(c)   
Feedback _always_ appreciated.   
Grab yerself a heapin' helpin' of some fictionality at Neftzer's OutBack Fiction Shack online at royaltoby.com / shack 


	6. A Parisian Train Platform

_Witchblade_, pre-series.  
*Rated "pW" for Previous Wielder. Deals with past lives. Based largely on conjecture, historical fact, and previous same-author fanfiction. 

* * *

With the Witchblade's now-relaxed grip on her arm, and pain running through her like percolating coffee, Elizabeth reached her left hand toward a nearby chair back. Her present vision swimming in a vision past, her hand found nothing but the light-as-air scarf it already held, her knees gave out, and she collapsed. 

_A Parisian train platform, dread heavy as sand in her mouth. Connor O'Barragh, the man called Jean, had taken their luggage bound for Berlin to load himself. She and Mabel were alone with the priest, Bellamy. He gave her an envelope stuffed with German marks--no easy thing to acquire. _

"Sold a little painting," the Father explained how Connor had come by the money; "about so high, and so wide," framing its size with his hands. "Rare. Year 1412." 

Falling to the floor, the pain increased, making it almost difficult to follow the vision memory. 

_"Seems Bellamy, here," Connor referenced the priest by name, "handles the German's 'paperwork,'" he made a joke of the black market pastime. "Straight from Rome--knows the Holy Father himself." _

"They'll be coming soon with the bodies," Elizabeth heard herself warn them, "This is for you," she half-mumbled, extending the scarf she had sewn the night before from the grey silk of her ruined New Year's gown. 

Extending it to Connor as Bellamy only moments (was it moments--or lifetimes) ago extended it to her in this faraway Berliner hallway. 

_Connor took the gift and slung it about his neck. "Tie it on me," he said. His eye sparked at her with such familiarity--such knowingness--she would almost have stayed if he had asked her at that moment. _

The memory/vision slipped and slid. Bronte was almost able to hear someone call her name, far off--from beyond the vision. 

_...to be continued..._

* * *

Sorry for the long drought between my posting sections. ;) 

DISCLAIMERS: Elizabeth Bronte and the Witchblade (and additional characters that will make appearances in other chapters to come) are property of Top Cow and Warner Bros. I mean no disrespect, and am not making any money or profit out of their use here.   
Any inaccuracies please chalk up to deliberate anachronism. 

What happened to Elizabeth Bronte before _Possession_? Check out _Occupation_, posted here at fanfiction.net. 

Neftzer 2003(c)   
Feedback _always_ appreciated, and often sparks more frequent posting. Heck, there are lots of different ways to get inspired. ;)   
Grab yerself a heapin' helpin' of some fictionality at Neftzer's OutBack Fiction Shack online at royaltoby.com / shack 


	7. Without an Anchor

_Witchblade_, pre-series.  
*Rated "pW" for Previous Wielder. Deals with past lives. Based largely on conjecture, historical fact, and previous same-author fanfiction. 

* * *

_As the train pulled away from the station, Major Stretzer declared; "what luck, what luck today--not only to find you, good Frau, but--." He unwrapped a tightly rolled small, unframed canvas._ And though having lived this moment, its secret long-known to her, a chill nonetheless when down her spine. 

_Depicted on the ancient canvas was the Witchblade, armed into the full gauntlet, the eyes of its wearer glinting with the light of the talisman stone. _

"Look!" Major Stretzer announced, his satisfaction complete. "I have seen this very weapon in der Fuehrer's own collection! It must be--what, do you think? Thousands of years old." 

This man could not hope to reconcile the ancient armor in the painting with the jeweled bauble on her wrist, yet Elizabeth's hand moved to hide the Witchblade, though it was already covered by her coat sleeve and glove. 

At that moment, another hand caught her own, and when she looked up she saw a tall man, with dark eyebrows closely knit as though he could feel the present physical pain and the remembered despair she fought so hard against. Though not part of the memory, she had seen this man before. 

In sibilant, softly spoken English he motioned to the painting Stretzer had bought, "do you not think it a good likeness? My master prizes it almost above all others." 

She followed this man's gaze high above to the walls--no longer those of the train--about them, where other paintings hung, showing widely varied illustrations of Blade and Wielder. 

She was just about to ask him where was her--if there was her, Elizabeth Bronte's--depiction when her abdomen contracted with such force that her view of the tall man began to ripple about the edges and shimmy into near evaporation, leaving her in that paneled, unwelcoming room alone. 

"Anchor yourself, my lady," he begged, his own gloved hand outstretched as though to accept hers, before the sight of him curled and whisped like the hair escaping from his queue, becoming nothing more than that of the smoke from the large--though not warm--fire. 

Alone, the scarf was once again in her hand. 

_...to be continued..._

* * *

Sorry for the long drought between my posting sections. ;) 

DISCLAIMERS: Elizabeth Bronte and the Witchblade (and additional characters that will make appearances in other chapters to come) are property of Top Cow and Warner Bros. I mean no disrespect, and am not making any money or profit out of their use here.   
Any inaccuracies please chalk up to deliberate anachronism. 

What happened to Elizabeth Bronte before _Possession_? Check out _Occupation_, posted here at fanfiction.net. 

Neftzer 2003(c)   
Feedback _always_ appreciated, and often sparks more frequent posting. Heck, there are lots of different ways to get inspired. ;)   
Grab yerself a heapin' helpin' of some fictionality at Neftzer's OutBack Fiction Shack online at royaltoby.com / shack 


	8. A Man Half Seen

_Witchblade_, pre-series.  
*Rated "pW" for Previous Wielder. Deals with past lives. Based largely on conjecture, historical fact, and previous same-author fanfiction. 

* * *

"Mabel!" she called out, her voice desperate, unfamiliar darkness everywhere. "May!" 

_"Elizabeth," she heard a man's smoothly cultured voice answer. "What are you doing?" _

The voice's lack of investment--its cool, almost bemused detachment and lack of identifiable accent further disoriented her. She began to sob. 

"She's gone, she's gone," he told her, as though soothing a child. The angle of his chin inched into a finger of moonlight, making its dimpling visible for an instant. "It was only a nightmare," he assured her, "just a dream. It's over now." 

She could see nothing of him but chin and lower lip, and the narrowest sliver of bare shoulder. Even in the night--for surely it was now night--his face was clean-shaven to smooth perfection. 

She rolled away from this half-seen man's offered embrace in the vision bed, her bare flesh and abdomen showing no visible sign of pregnancy, though her whole being felt the weight of it. 

Gripping the satin bedsheet to cover herself, her confusion and her grief, her left hand again found not the bedcovering it had reached for, but instead, the scarf. 

_...to be continued..._

* * *

Sorry for the long drought between my posting sections. ;) 

DISCLAIMERS: Elizabeth Bronte and the Witchblade (and additional characters that will make appearances in other chapters to come) are property of Top Cow and Warner Bros. I mean no disrespect, and am not making any money or profit out of their use here.   
Any inaccuracies please chalk up to deliberate anachronism. 

What happened to Elizabeth Bronte before _Possession_? Check out _Occupation_, posted here at fanfiction.net. 

Neftzer 2003(c)   
Feedback _always_ appreciated, and often sparks more frequent posting. Heck, there are lots of different ways to get inspired. ;)   
Grab yerself a heapin' helpin' of some fictionality at Neftzer's OutBack Fiction Shack online at royaltoby.com / shack 


	9. It's a Boy

_Witchblade_, pre-series.  
*Rated "pW" for Previous Wielder. Deals with past lives. Based largely on conjecture, historical fact, and previous same-author fanfiction. 

* * *

"Jack!" she shouted. "I need Jack!" She huffed with her demand, and the pain of quickening labor. 

_"Where's her man, love," she heard one Cockney voice say to another, only too late realizing they came from nurses at the foot of her bed. _

"Taken by the war, no doubt, dearie," answered the other. "Ain't they all." 

"Well, push there now, girl, push a good 'un," the first nurse encouraged. 

"Jack!" Bronte screamed, until she thought the word would cause her throat to crawl outside herself in an effort to be heard. She pushed with all she had left in her. 

She did not want to see this again. She did not need to see this again, to relive that day. 

_"It's a boy, it is, love, and a pretty thing he was," spoke the first nurse. _

"Would you like to hold him a bit, then?" asked the second. 

Bronte did not have to ask the obvious question. She did not have to incline her ears in hopes of catching the sound of a newborn's insistent cry. The child, her son--Jack's son--was dead. Made so, she did not doubt, from her grief at his father's death--only three weeks prior. 

She did not know if she could manage to hold the baby. "Leave him here," she told them flatly from where she lay. They did as she asked, but she found she could not look. She could not face him, his tiny, quickly growing cold fingers. His never-to-rise chest. His unseeing eyes. She turned her face to the wall and wept, though three weeks of mourning Jack would have made any onlookers doubtful she could still summon tears. 

The door to the room opened, and a stride she knew as Scott's entered. She could hear him pause, she assumed, to look at the child, his own dead nephew. 

"Brigid," he spoke, his voice rich with Scotland, referencing his wife--Jack's sister, "Brigid sends her," his voice caught, "best." He paused. "She's taken Mabel with the boys." 

"I need her," Bronte told him, spoke to the wall. "Now. Here." 

"Of course," he agreed, though he could not have anticipated such a demand his voice nonplussed. "We can get her here within the hour." 

Bronte did not answer, nor did she turn away from the wall. Moments passed, her ragged sobbing breath the only sound between them. When she had exhausted herself, she heard the light rustle of cloth against a tabletop, and she knew that Scott held the child in his arms. 

"A fine pair of green eyes," he said, conversationally. "The lashes are a bit thick for a boy, though, I might think." 

She said nothing. 

"Had you a name?" 

"No," she lied. 

_...to be continued..._

* * *

Sorry for the long drought between my posting sections. ;) 

DISCLAIMERS: Elizabeth Bronte and the Witchblade (and additional characters that will make appearances in other chapters to come) are property of Top Cow and Warner Bros. I mean no disrespect, and am not making any money or profit out of their use here.   
Any inaccuracies please chalk up to deliberate anachronism. 

What happened to Elizabeth Bronte before _Possession_? Check out _Occupation_, posted here at fanfiction.net. 

Neftzer 2003(c)   
Feedback _always_ appreciated, and often sparks more frequent posting. Heck, there are lots of different ways to get inspired. ;)   
Grab yerself a heapin' helpin' of some fictionality at Neftzer's OutBack Fiction Shack online at royaltoby.com / shack 


End file.
